Rise to Any Challenge, and Appreciate and Learn Things Along the Way

On April 7th, I had an emergency appendectomy. I considered myself lucky that my appendix didn’t burst before it was removed. Just 3 days later, I was driving to my friend’s house when a woman blacked out behind the wheel, crossed over three lanes & drove right into me. I considered myself lucky that I only had a fractured wrist, that the other driver didn’t have a scratch, and that the only big casualties were my car and the tree that I smashed into.

The bottom line: both incidences could have been a nightmare and I appreciated that they weren’t worse.

Being out of work is stressful, frustrating, annoying, and inconvenient – and a hundred other adjectives! And to make it worse, while you are networking and interviewing, you have to “act” like it’s a lot better than it really is because if you aren’t positive, everyone will run from you … so it’s absolutely necessary that you remain positive.

But what are you learning and what are you appreciating along the way? What is this struggle teaching you? Only you can answer this.

Perhaps things came very easy to you, and until now, and this is the first time you are in a battle for something important. Learn from that struggle and focus on what needs to be done. Appreciate when things go well and enjoy the positive things that happen during your day.

If you are a more experienced professional who is out of work, what are you learning? Are you learning to network like never before? Are your follow up skills finally what they should have been before you were unemployed?

Look for the positive lessons you are learning and you will grow and become a stronger person. That old saying “That which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger!” is true in a lot of ways. When we are tested and stretched we grow and become stronger.